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Visualizing Oceans of Data: Educational Interface Design

Large, high-quality online scientific datasets give today’s students the opportunity to work with authentic data and participate in real scientific work. Yet the educational promise of these datasets will not be met without concerted effort. ODI has created two reports to support interface and tool designers in their efforts to create data visualization tools for the classroom.

About the ReportProduced by the National Science Foundation-funded Oceans of Data project led by EDC and Scripps Institution of Oceanography, this reports presents >70 cross-cutting and specific guidelines for interface and data visualization tool development and discusses key considerations (principles, research, and theory) that inform these guidelines.

Through specific examples, the report explains how to avoid visualization pitfalls and make scientific databases more broadly accessible by (1) adjusting the cognitive load imposed by the user interface and visualizations so that it doesn’t exceed the amount of information the learner can actively process; (2) drawing attention to important features and patterns; and (3) enabling customization of visualizations and tools to meet the needs of diverse learners.

The report was produced by the National Science Foundation-funded Oceans of Data project led by EDC and Scripps Institution of Oceanography.